The Minister Primarily by John Oliver Killens

Author:John Oliver Killens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amistad
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

On the following morning they flew to the City, along with their escorts, Parkington and Carlton Carson, and the colored government chauffeur, Horace Whitestick, who had been assigned to them to drive them wherever they went, including crazy, as he told them jokingly. But he meant it, doggedly. All the way to New York, Secret Service chief Carlton Carson, born in Lolliloppi of the ’Sippis, Near-the-Gulf, had tried in vain to convince the bogus PM that he did not really want to go to Lolliloppi, Mississippi.

“You don’t really want to go down there, Your Excellency.”

“Can you say Mister?” the PM asked him innocently, apropos of nothing in particular, apparently.

The jet hit a heavy air pocket and bounced Jimmy Jay’s belly like an erratic football. Carlton Carson went white as a soda cracker; saltless, that is. “Can I say Mister?” he repeated two minutes later.

“How would I know?” the fake PM said. “If I had known the answer, I would not have asked the question.”

“What question?”

“‘Can you say Mister.’”

“Of course I can say Mister.”

“Can you say ‘Mister Prime Minister’ instead of ‘Your Excellency’? Most people call me Mister Prime Minister.”

Secret Service chief Carlton Carson of the ’Sippis swallowed his own bitter bitters and looked around for Parkington, but Parkington was preoccupied with his Guanayan counterpart, Foreign Minister Mamadou Tangi, and the only person’s face he saw was the smiling Black face of the presidential chauffeur, Horace Whitestick, a dark-brown face that forever held an improbable mixture of servility and sarcasm. Whitestick Horace was always like a bulldog that growled and wagged his tail in the selfsame motion. Carlton Carson looked back at His Excellency. He opened his mouth and finally the words issued forth. “Yes, Your Excellency. I can say Mister Prime Minister.”

His Excellency smiled. “Don’t you mean ‘Yes, Mister Prime Minister’?”

“Yes, Mister Prime Minister,” Carlton Carson mumbled weakly. Then he got back on the track from which he had been derailed, expertly, momentarily. “You don’t want to go to Lolliloppi, Mississippi, do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you, Mister Prime Minister?” Carlton Carson was sweating chinaberries.

“And why wouldn’t I?”

“Well—it’s so hot down there this time of the year.”

His mind had wandered, remembering. And his memory sent a warmth throughout his body, remembering. A gentle warmth as he recalled the essence of her, Thelma Powell, n.k.a. (now known as) Aisha Umulubalu. In the confusion that followed the attempted assassination, she’d come close to him and whispered, “Your secret is entirely safe with me. Whatever you’re up to, I know it’s for a worthy cause. And, sweetheart, it had better be.” She slipped to him her business card. He wiped the perspiration from his brow and felt Maria’s large wide eyes heatedly upon the two of them. When he’d looked at it later, he’d read: AISHA UMULUBALU, COUNSELOR AT LAW, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION. Damn! he’d thought, and double damn!

Coming back now from his stream of consciousness, the bogus PM stared at carrot-colored Carson and laughed uproariously. Then he said, “I’m used to the hot weather.

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